diff --git a/app/src/processing/app/Base.java b/app/src/processing/app/Base.java
index c792c8125..651c30135 100644
--- a/app/src/processing/app/Base.java
+++ b/app/src/processing/app/Base.java
@@ -159,12 +159,12 @@ public class Base {
 
     // Set the debug flag based on a file being present in the settings folder
     File debugFile = getSettingsFile("debug");
-    /*
-    if (debugFile.isDirectory()) {
-      // if it's a directory, it's a leftover from older releases, clear it
-      Util.removeDir(debugFile);
-    } else*/
-    if (debugFile.exists()) {
+
+    // If it's a directory, it's a leftover from much older releases
+    // (2.x? 3.x?) that wrote DebugMode.log files into this directory.
+    // Could remove the directory, but it's harmless enough that it's
+    // not worth deleting files in case something could go wrong.
+    if (debugFile.exists() && debugFile.isFile()) {
       DEBUG = true;
     }
 
diff --git a/todo.txt b/todo.txt
index 022084937..6b5c00a38 100755
--- a/todo.txt
+++ b/todo.txt
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 1276 (4.0a7)
-
+X really chatty console messages for people with old settings directories
+X   ignore 'debug' entry in prefs dir if it's a leftover DebugMode directory
 
 Sam updates
 X can we get rid of pdexEnabled? does the current code work w/ java tabs?