Directory in kivy going to home directory rather than to the directory of the main.py in mac but not in Windows - kivy

Question

I have an unusual situation. I have a perfectly functional kivy app. Essentially, it uses FileChooserIconView and takes the root
`FileChooserIconView:
filters: [root.selected]
size_hint: (1, 0.4)`
so that with this function
`def selected(self, directory, filename):
# This function extracts the selected folder using
#the information from FileChooser
# This function takes as input:
# -filename: The filename of each file in each directory
# This function gives the output:
# -the full path to the directory with the selected folder
self.ids.mypath.text = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(filename), '') `
I can extract the directory of interest (rather than every single file in the directory).
The app extracts the directory of interest with FileChooser and uses it to extract all files there recursively and process them.
It works perfectly in Spyder in Windows. I package it in Windows and it works perfectly as an independent exe (finds all files that it needs for uploading and works perfectly).
It works perfectly in Spyder in Mac. However, I package it in Mac and it is completely unable to find the local files. This is my problem. Once packaged in mac, instead of looking for the local files in the dist folder, it looks for them in the mac home directory. It requires to read a file that is actually in the dist folder, but the app does not look for it there. It looks for it in the mac home directory.
I have tried to put the current directory where the main.py is (in the dist folder) using several methods, including
filename = inspect.getframeinfo(inspect.currentframe()).filename
path = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(filename))
from the question
How to properly determine current script directory?
but still it looks to the mac home directory instead of the directory where the main.py is.
I tried to change directory using the path above, but still goes to the mac home directory.
When I use print(os.getcwd()) in the main.py file it prints the correct directory when used in Spyder, but it goes to the mac home directory after packaging. I am really stuck and I could not find a similar question.
Any help much appreciated.

Answer 1

Thank you very much for all the comments, especially John Anderson who put me in the right track. They made my search much easier.
Finally, I solved it.
When you package an app you should reference the location of the main.py. I was using __file__ and, when the app is not packaged, that works and that is why it worked in Spyder. However, when the app is packaged, the correct way to find the main.py folder is sys._MEIPASS
That it is, as simple as using sys._MEIPASS
For more detail, the link https://pyinstaller.readthedocs.io/en/stable/runtime-information.html#using-file-and-sys-meipass provided by John Anderson is great.