Magento 2 Application Modes

There are 3 modes of Magento application, i.e. default (which is the default mode after install), developer, and production.

Here is the difference between them:

default:
- Not optimized for production
- Symlinks to static view files are published to the pub/static directory
- Errors and exceptions are not shown to the user, as they are logged to the filesystem
- This is the default mode after install, use it if you only want to view and explore Magento. You should avoid using it in development or production environment.
developer
- Symlinks to static view files are published to the pub/static directory
- provides verbose logging
- Enables automatic code compilation
- Enables enhance debugging
- Slowest performance
production
- Errors and exception are not shown to the user, as they are logged to the filesystem
- Static view files are not materialized, as they are served from the cache only
- Automatic code file compilation is disabled, as new or updated files are not written to the filesystem
- Enabling and disabling the cache types is not possible from Magento admin
- Fastest performance

To set Magento application mode from command line, use this command:

php bin/magento deploy:mode:set:{mode}

change {mode} to default, developer or production.

and to view current application mode, use this command:

php bin/magento deploy:mode:show

or you can view it directly in array inside file app/etc/env.php, in field ‘MAGE_MODE‘.

During development, carefully balancing developer mode with some of the cache types being enabled/disabled can provide optimal performance