Optical microscopy is non-invasive, sample-friendly, and fast, rendering itself the major approach for human beings to explore the microcosmic world. However, the diffraction limit has hindered the resolution of all optical imaging systems to approximately half the wavelength of visible light for over a century, until it was fundamentally broken by the development of super-resolution optical fluorescence microscopy. This technology bridges the gap between the electron microscopes (1 nm) and the ordinary optical microscopes (200 nm to 250 nm), but it is essentially useless for most samples, especially those non-fluorescent-labeled. In recent years, inspired by the synthetic aperture imaging, we have developed the optical super-resolution imaging based on frequency shift, providing a new approach to optical super-resolution imaging. As the technique is not limited by the nonlinear effects of fluorescence, it is applicable for both non-fluorescent-labeled and fluorescent-labeled samples. Besides, due to such advantages as fast imaging, high sample universality, and low phototoxicity, the technique shows good prospects in multiple fields, including materials science, biology, and medicine. In this paper, we deliver a detailed overview on both the principles and methods of optical super-resolution imaging based on frequency shift, as well as our prospects to the future development direction of this technique.