Access to safe drinking water has become an extremely urgent research topic worldwide. In recent years, the technology of solar vapor generation has been extensively explored as a potential and effective strategy of transforming elements content in seawater. In this review, the basic concepts and theories of metal-based photothermal vapor generation device (PVGD) with excellent optical and thermal regulatory are introduced. In the view of optical regulation, how to achieve high-efficiency localized evaporation in different evaporation system (i.e., volumetric solar heating and interface solar heating) is discussed; from the aspect of thermal regulation, the importance of selective absorption surface for interfacial PVGD is analyzed. Based on the above discussion and analysis, we summarize the challenges of metal-based desalination device.