Solar drying is useful in several residential, commercial and industrial applications. Proper dryer design, operation and maintenance are essential for enhancing the dryer performance and better quality of the dried product. Solar dryer is beneficial as it protects the product from adverse climatic conditions and quickly economically dry the product. The dryer design has undergone significant shapes, dimensions, and storage features leading to better reliability. Researchers worldwide have reported higher energetic and exergetic performance through advanced design, measurement, and control features. Conventional dryer’s efficiency deterioration is attributed to the lack of proper material selection and computational fluid flow techniques. Traditional dryer designs have focused on product drying rate while advanced sustainable solar dryer designs increased solar thermal utilization in a limited area with locally available materials based on fluid flow conditions suitable to the microclimatic conditions. Analysis using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software has assisted in refining dryer designs to be compact with the complex flow and quick product drying features. The present paper tracks developments in solar dryer designs for different dryer classifications. Recommendations for energy-efficient design and measures for improvement in existing dryers are also discussed.