A Basic Guide to Understanding Magento 2 Modes

1. Default Mode

The first mode that you get when you install Magento 2 on a single server is the default mode. This mode operates when no other modes are specified.
Can this mode be used for your Production environment? The purpose of this mode is to help you use Magento 2 without additional configuration. Thus, it isn’t optimized for your production environment.
Magento can generate content such as images and CSS files directly in default mode from the cache.
This is why default mode is primarily used to set up your Magento store after which you should consider switching to either developer or production modes.

2. Developer Mode

The developer mode consists of debugging errors and installing extensions in Magento 2.
How is it different from the other modes? When you operate from this mode, your static view files are produced and written in the pub/static folder when needed instead of being cached to the system.
It speeds up development as you don’t have to compile Magento codes every time you install or update a custom module. Moreover, it offers you the opportunity to troubleshoot errors and debug extension conflicts without analyzing the log files.
Thus, helping you optimize your Magento store performance and enable template path hints.

3. Production Mode

This mode is optimized to facilitate live store deployments. Moreover, this mode ensures to log in errors into the filesystem instead of showing them on the front end. This ensures your customers do not see error messages when things go wrong.

4. Maintenance Mode

This mode is commonly used by Magento maintenance services to upgrade your Magento 2 or update your website’s front-end design. In this mode, it limits using the front end so that you can verify changes. You can alternatively use this mode to create a customized maintenance mode page to encourage your customers to return once your maintenance is complete.