Because of the physiology and pathology importance of bio-thiols, more and more scientists devoted to visualize the biological processes induced by bio-thiols. Fluorescent probes as one of the most attractive tools have been widely developed for thiols specific detection and imaging because of the nonintrusive nature. Based on the thiol nucleophilic reaction, we herein summarized the designing strategies and the optical properties of the thiols probes developed by our group in recent years. Further, we discussed the trend for thiols probes development.