No life can be sustained without access to a drinkable water. The drinkable water can be produced by various methods either by renewable Energy or non-renewable energy. Renewable energy, especially solar energy, are freely available sources. Solar energy can be applied to produce water purifications using different techniques. One of the important techniques is the use of solar still. Solar still can be defined as the device that produce a purified water from a salted one. It consists of basin filled with salted water (impurified) and glass cover. Due to its importance, there are many studies conducted about this topic. In this study we provide a literature review which presents the different techniques implied to produce a drinkable water depending on solar energy. There are different methods have been studied such as: nanoparticles, phase change material and so on. According to the literature, nanoparticles can improve the surface of the solar still. The glass surface is coated with nanoparticles in order to improve the efficiency of the solar still. In fact, adding nanoparticles are beneficial due to their high surface area and higher thermal conductivity of these nanoparticles which in turn improve the heat transfer. However, these improvements are related to the type, size, shape and concentrations of nanoparticles. On the other hand, one of the limitations of solar still is their dependence on the availability of solar, to solve this limitation phase change material incorporated. The main purpose of the phase change material is their use to store energy and produce a drinkable water during a cloudy weather and during night. It is important to have access to a drinkable water in different times especially at night when there is no sunlight. Other techniques have been studied by different researchers such as different designs of solar still. All of the above methods are well presented and critically reviewed in this paper.