Super-resolution microscopy invented at the beginning of the 21 ^st century has rapidly become a indispensable method in life science research owing to their nanoscale spatial resolution, low damage of sample preparation, and so on. Among a variety of super-resolution imaging techniques, single-molecule localization super-resolution microscopy (SMLM) with straightforward principle and outstanding spatial resolution gains more and more attention from researchers, thereby continuously making significant progress on the techniques and applications. Firstly, this paper reviewed the principle of SMLM and discussed some technical problems including the optical path building, the image reconstruction, and the drift correction. Two types of representative SMLMs were indroduced and discussed. Then, diversified multi-color SMLMs were introduced and their advantages and disadvantages were analyzed. The improvement of imaging parameters including the lateral/axial spatial resolution, imaging field, and imaging depth of SMLM was subsequently discussed. The research progress of correlated imaging of the SMLM combined with deep learning and SMLM combined with the electron microscope was further introduced. Moreover, the extraction and analysis methods of SMLM data were discussed. Finally, some important applications of SMLM in cell biology were listed and the development prospects of SMLM were discussed. We hope the present review could be a useful reference for the SMLM users and provides novel insights for them, thus promoting the in-depth applications of SMLM in life science research.