Normally the dialog opens in the directory of the current document. If that does not exist (no documents open or a new unsaved document) it opens with the current working directory. For Geany started from the command line this is sensible.
Unfortunately on Windows for some Windows weirdness the working directory is changed from the startup working directory to the only other directory Geany knows must exist, the installation directory, the comment in the code says:
```C /* On Windows, change the working directory to the Geany installation path to not lock * the directory of a file passed as command line argument (see bug #2626124). * This also helps if plugins or other code uses relative paths to load * any additional resources (e.g. share/geany-plugins/...). */ ```