system leading to respiratory tract infections (respiratory viruses, RVs). These diseases have the highest morbidity and fatality rates among acute infectious diseases and have caused a series of pandemics throughout human history. The first recorded RV occurred in 1200 BC, and subsequent major RVs have included the 1918 influenza virus, [1] severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1), [2][3][4][5] 2009 swine flu (H1N1), [6] Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus, [7,8] and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), [9,10] which together have cost billions of lives (Figure 1). [11,12] The epidemics mentioned above impose a significant burden on healthcare systems and the global economy. [13,14] The recurrence of RV epidemics could result from their ubiquitous transmission routes, including direct transmission by sneezing, airborne/aerosol transmission by droplets from infected persons, and transmission by hand-to-eye/nose/mouth contact spreading RVs potentially from contaminated surfaces (handles, elevators, commonly used shared areas, and shopping bags) to an uninfected person. [15][16][17] The major RV types are influenza virus, coronavirus (CoV), adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), rhinovirus,The ever-growing global threats to human life caused by the human acute respiratory virus (RV) infections have cost billions of lives, created a significant economic burden, and shaped society for centuries. The timely response to emerging RVs could save human lives and reduce the medical care burden. The development of RV detection technologies is essential for potentially preventing RV pandemic and epidemics. However, commonly used detection technologies lack sensitivity, specificity, and speed, thus often failing to provide the rapid turnaround times. To address this problem, new technologies are devised to address the performance inadequacies of the traditional methods. These emerging technologies offer improvements in convenience, speed, flexibility, and portability of point-of-care test (POCT). Herein, recent developments in POCT are comprehensively reviewed for eight typical acute respiratory viruses. This review discusses the challenges and opportunities of various recognition and detection strategies and discusses these according to their detection principles, including nucleic acid amplification, optical POCT, electrochemistry, lateral flow assays, microfluidics, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, and microarrays. The importance of limits of detection, throughput, portability, and specificity when testing clinical samples in resource-limited settings is emphasized. Finally, the evaluation of commercial POCT kits for both essential RV diagnosis and clinical-oriented practices is included.