I’ve spent a few hours trying to wrap my head around how WordPress determines which template to use depending on which “Front page displays” option has been set. I’m writing this as the guide I wish existed when I was looking into this.
If “Front page displays” is set to “Your latest posts,” WordPress will use front-page.php to render your homepage if the file exists. If front-page.php doesn’t exist, WordPress will use home.php with a fallback to index.php.
If “Front page displays” is set to “A static page,” you’ll also have to set which pages to use for “Front page” and “Posts page.”
For “Front page,” WordPress will use front-page.php to render the page if the file exists. If front-page.php doesn’t exist, WordPress will use the standard Page template hierarchy (i.e., custom page template, page-slug.php, page-id.php, page.php, index.php).
For “Posts page,” WordPress will only ever look to home.php with a fallback to index.php. The existence (or non-existence) of front-page.php doesn’t affect anything here.
In a nutshell, front-page.php can be used to render either a list of posts (“Your latest posts”) or a static page (“A static page -> Front page”) depending on the site settings.
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