Do indexes work in developer mode?

Question

Are index tables relevant when developer mode is on? If so which ones?

Answer 1

Developer mode does not effect indexing process.

If you set indexes to "Update on Save" then whenever you update anything indexing would update. Where as if you set "Update on Schedule" then it will update according to scheduling set in crontab.xml of respective index module.

Note: In "Update on Schedule" case, it is important that you have scheduled magento cronjobs on crontab.

Developer mode only effect on Cache process. You cannot disable any indexing directly from admin if you are on production mode, where as you would have option to disable any cache on developer mode.

Hope this will clear things for you on Magento :)