Set Jupyter Lab working directory to the directory where Jupyter was started, not the parent directory of the notebook? [duplicate] - jupyter-notebook

Question

Question: How can one set the working directory of all notebooks opened in Jupyter Lab with a double-click, to be the project's folder, /myproject/, regardless of the notebook's subfolder within that parent folder? The working directory is identified by !pwd on Linux/Mac or !cd on Windows.
Context:
The Jupyter Lab sessions is initiated from the project's folder, by: /myproject/jupyter lab.
I am not looking for changing the working directory within the notebook with code (e.g. with !cd.. or using os), but change the settings of Jupyter Lab, such that the all kernels will start with the folder from where Jupyter Lab was initiated.
This is useful for being able to use consistent relative folders, regardless of the subfolder they are referred from. For example, for loading data in a specific subfolder.

Answer 1

I agree that this is often a preferred approach! I always have my notebooks configured to work like that because it:
makes it easy to specify paths to data and for outputs and
allows moving a notebook between directories without the need to change the paths
makes jupyterlab-lsp code intelligence work more reliably
I have a python module called make_paths_absolute.py with the following contents:
from os import chdir
from pathlib import Path
def make_paths_relative_to_root():
"""Always use the same, absolute (relative to root) paths
which makes moving the notebooks around easier.
"""
top_level = Path(__file__).parent
chdir(top_level)
make_paths_relative_to_root()
And in the first cell of every notebook, I add a line import make_paths_absolute. I like it this way because it makes it:
reproducible: anyone who copies/clones my project will be able to run the code without the need to customize anything in their Jupyter environment
work with all notebook interfaces (whether JupyterLab/RetroLab/classic Notebook)
is quite obvious for anyone reading the notebook that they should expect the paths to be absolute (=relative to the root).
To make that work you first need to set PYTHONPATH pointing to the root of the repository when starting JupyterLab. To do so on Linux/Mac you can prepend the jupyter lab command with:
PYTHONPATH=/path/to/your/lab/root:$PYTHONPATH jupyter lab
Alternatively, you can specify PYTHONPATH in kernel.json (either by modifying the default kernel specification or creating a copy of it first, see https://stackoverflow.com/a/53595397).
PS. The above is a simplification of my setup. In reality, I store make_paths_absolute.py in helpers package (so there is also an empty helpers/__init__.py and there is extra .parent) together with other initialization-time code, including a notebook called notebook_setup.ipynb which contains things like %matplotlib inline, pandas customizations (like making sure it uses stable sort), warning filters etc. So my every notebook starts with:
import helpers.make_paths_absolute
%run helpers/notebook_setup.ipynb
and I am really liking this setup working like that for two years now without any problems.
There is a feature request for making this easier at: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/issues/11619.

Answer 2

The most easiest solution in my opinion
Open Notepad
Paste the command "jupyter notebook --NotebookApp.iopub_data_rate_limit=1.0e10"
Save the notepad file with an extension of ".bat" instead of ".txt"
Paste the file in which directory you want to initialize your jupyter
Double click and open the ".bat" file
Jupyter opens with desired directory as base
This way you control the jupyter root directory as and when required and don't
really have to perform any manual settings
Hope this helps
".bat" file created on Desktop
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".bat" file double clicked and executed
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jupyter opens with Desktop as the intended base directory
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