Abstract: Autophagy is a highly conserved and lysosomal-mediated process for the degradation of intracellular proteins and organelles to maintain the intracellular environment. Autophagy is involved in cellular physiological processes that affect the progression of some human diseases, including cancer, inflammation, and nervous system diseases. Meanwhile, it also acts as a cellular defense mechanism to prevent the host from infections caused by certain pathogenic bacteria and virus. At present, there are many ways to study autophagy： observing the morphological structure of autophagosome by transmission electron microscopy;estimating the autophagic activity by calculating the size and number of the tested autophagosome; determining the occurrence of autophagy in cells by testing the presence of autophagy protein LC3 in autophagosome membrane; detecting the autophagosome by monodansylcadaverine（MDC） staining method; determining the autophagic flux. The commonly used detection methods for autophagy are introduced, in hoping to provide references for the autophagy researchers.