Material science is one of the decisive tools toward engineering versatile compounds for numerous technological applications. Over the last decades, thiospinels have been attracting great interest because of their unique characteristics and potential utilizations offering innovative and interesting features. The characteristics of these transition metal sulfides play a key role in many different applications and make thiospinels an essential class of material. To the best of our knowledge, this work, for the first time, summarizes broadband studies on thiospinels reported in the literature. The scope of this review covers all synthesis methods applied over, the chemical and physical properties, and the clean energy applications of thiospinels, which have achieved tremendous significance. It underlined and proposed the challenges and future perspectives based on sulfur-based ternary compounds. Moreover, this review draws attention to the current and future research needs of thiospinel materials to improve and broaden their applications and thus commercialization. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.