The damage and failure of rock caused by temperature effect has been widely concerned by the rock mechanics community. As a common bedrock of deep mining, geothermal development and high-level radioactive nuclear waste disposal, granite is very important for the study of its physical and mechanical characteristics and damage mechanism of temperature action. In this paper, the research progress and achievements of physical and mechanical properties and damage mechanism of granite after temperature action are systematically reviewed by sorting out and analyzing the relevant literatures on thermal damage of granite at home and abroad. The results show that: 1) The change of macroscopic physical and mechanical properties of granite is obviously affected by temperature. For example, with the increase of temperature, the physical parameters such as volume and permeability of granite show an upward trend, while the mechanical parameters such as tensile strength and compressive strength show a downward trend. 2) The fine and microscopic morphology characteristics can explain the reasons for the change of macroscopic physical and mechanical properties of granite from the perspective of mineral composition and crack evolution. Under different temperature effects, different mineral compositions of granite will undergo a series of reactions, and the development and expansion of cracks will cause granite to produce different degrees of damage. 3) The thermal damage equation of granite can be established based on the parameters such as longitudinal wave velocity, elastic modulus and rock strength. The crack evolution law and damage characteristics of granite under temperature effect can be intuitively analyzed by real-time monitoring technology such as digital image and acoustic emission and numerical simulation methods such as finite element method and discrete element method. These research results are expected to provide reference for the study of macro, meso and micro response characteristics and damage correlation mechanism of granite under temperature effect.