Given the vast abundance and inexhaustibility of sunlight, tapping into solar energy to supplement clean water supply and to treat wastewater is a viable solution to current global challenges of fresh water scarcity and clean energy shortage. Solar driven water evaporation, which uses photothermal materials to capture and convert sunlight to heat so to generate water vapor, is an integral part of any solar powered clean water production. In this presentation, various advanced photothermal materials with proper heat management that are able to capture whole solar spectrum and convent it to heat with extremely high efficiency will be covered. Very recent development of next-generation solar still design will be presented. The application of solar water evaporation to brine treatment with zero-liquid discharge (ZLD) will be introduced along with fully solar driven sorption-based atmospheric water generators (AWGs).