With the development of industrialized society, environmental pollution has become increasingly serious. Pollution control and management has been the major scientific issue urgently need to be addressed. Among various pollution management methods, semiconductor photocatalytic material, as an ideal cleaning material for pollution control and management due to its unique properties, is mainly used to degrade toxic substances, photocatalytic water splitting and photoelectric conversion, etc. Titanium dioxide (TiO2), as a common wide-band gap semiconductor, is considered as one of the most vital photocatalysts because of its highly photoactivity, chemical stability, non-toxicity, low cost, etc. However, the application of TiO2 is directly restricted by such key scientific and technological problems as low light utilization efficiency and wide band gap (3.2 eV) of TiO2. Approaches and methods of realizing TiO2 visible light catalysis recently were summarized from chemical and physical perspectives. Chemical and physical methods including slow light effects, Mie scattering effect and surface plasma resonance were reviewed. In addition, the work has given prospect regarding deepening photocatalytic mechanism of existing TiO2 visible light system, exploring effective volume phase dopant and surface sensitizer, designing and controlling existing forms of dopant and surface sensitizer, and further improving TiO2 photocatalytic efficiency.