As Ronald notes, the chdir to the user’s Documents folder is *only* needed when launching via IDLE.app (for example by double-clicking an IDLE.app icon in the macOS Finder) because the user has no control over the launched app’s working directory in that case and the default is inappropriate. Whereas, when launching IDLE from a command line (for example, with “python -m idlelib’), IDLE inherits the working directory of the UNIX shell process which the user has complete control over. This is how users experience IDLE today on all UNIXy platforms. Thus, the chdir location is correct and current code and behavior should not be changed except to catch a chdir failure. The only question is what to do when an exception is caught.