Because of the biological importance of thiols, the development of probes for thiols has been an active research area in recent years. In this review, we summarize the results of recent exciting reports regarding thiol-addition reactions and their applications in thiol recognition. The examples reported can be classified into four reaction types including 1,1, 1,2, 1,3, 1,4 addition reactions, according to their addition mechanisms, based on different Michael acceptors. In all cases, the reactions are coupled to color and/or emission changes, although some examples dealing with electrochemical recognition have also been included. The use of thiol-addition reactions is a very simple and straightforward procedure for the preparation of thiol-sensing probes.