From https://twitter.com/sgomez/status/1362342877683138561

Sergio Gomez: Thanks a lot @derickr. You are very nice. I ran xdebug_info() function with XDEBUG_MODE=debug in my env, but it always shows develop mode. I didn't found anyone with my same problem so I guess that it is something I did wrong. That was my only problem, the IDE connects well.

Derick Rethans: xdebug_info() should show the source of the modes, but the value for the INI setting "xdebug.mode" further down won't (can't) be changed through the environment variable as it's a built-in PHP thing. I can see if I can fix that in xdebug_info() output though!

Also, updated it in the docs page: https://xdebug.org/docs/all_settings#mode:

Sergio: The point is that with this sentence: "You can also set the mode by setting the XDEBUG_MODE environment variable on the command-line; this will take precedence over the xdebug.mode setting." I understood that xdebug.mode in xdebug_info() will display the new mode."