As more and more pollutants threaten human health, it is necessary and essential to develop sensitive, accurate and rapid methods and sensory materials to detect harmful substance. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are inorganic-organic hybrids assembled from inorganic metal ions or clusters and suitable organic ligands. Zinc-based MOFs (Zn-MOFs) have emerged as one of the most promising sensory material of MOFs for practical applications, and attracted significant attention due to structural diversity and incomparable stability properties. However, there are few reviews on systemic summary of synthesis design, mechanism and application of Zn-MOFs. In this review, we summarize the synthesis design methods, structure types and luminescence mechanism of Zn-MOFs sensor recognition in the past ten years and their applications in metal cations, anions, organic compounds and other analytes. Finally, we present a short conclusion, and look forward to the future development direction of Zn-MOFs.