How to change default path for "save the figure" in python?

Question

I have a python code to create a figure. After showing it with plt.show(), I want to save the figure.
To avoid messing up the aspect ratio, resolution, etc, I do not want to use the savefig-command in the code. Instead, I want to use the "save the figure" button from the figure window.
However, by default, it prompts my home folder as location for the save. I would like the save to automatically be in the directory where the code was executed.
How/where can I change this window default path for saving to the current folder (or somewhere else)?

I tried this command from Change directory to the directory of a Python script at the beginning but it did not help, even though gives the filename correctly:

os.chdir(os.path.dirname(__file__))

Answer 1

It looks like you may be able to set this by changing the defaults file matplotlibrc, check out the guidance under http://matplotlib.org/users/customizing.html where the important lines are under the savefig parameters:

# the default savefig params can be different from the display params

...

savefig.directory   : ~        # default directory in savefig dialog box, 
                               # leave empty to always use current working directory

It seems this was introduced in matplotlib 1.3. I guess you could set this using,

matplotlib as mpl
mpl.rcParams["savefig.directory"] = os.chdir(os.path.dirname(__file__))

at the top of a script or by changing the matplotlibrc file. For the dialog to default to cwd instead of script location (thanks to jjcf89 for this)

matplotlib as mpl 
mpl.rcParams["savefig.directory"] = ""