In this work, we aimed an effective low-cost system for water purification from Methylene Blue using the photocatalytic performance of (Cr,In) codoped ZnO sprayed thin films under sunlight irradiation. XRD analysis demonstrate that the samples crystallized in wurtzite ZnO phase, with a privileged orientation of crystallites towards (002) direction parallel to c-axis. The obtained images of AFM and SEM micrographs showed the enhancement of the roughness of ZnO films by codoping. In addition, the optical investigations indicated that the band gap values of (Cr,In) codoped ZnO thin films decreases from 3.3 eV to 3.1 eV in terms of (Cr, In) contents, whence, more solar energy can be exploited for photocatalytic reactions. Likewise, from PL study, the decrease of UV intensity peak by codoping points out the recombination inhibition in ZnO thin films. Also, the presence of defects demonstrated by visible emission has an important role in photocatalysis because on the surface of defects, surface redox reactions are taking place. So, they act as active sites of (Cr,In) codoped ZnO photocatalyst. Moreover, the effect of hydroxide OH center dot radicals and the superoxide anion radicals (02(center dot-)) in photocatalytic mechanism for Methylene Blue degradation was discussed. Furthermore, (Cr,In) codoped ZnO thin films showed an excellent photodegradation efficiency under sunlight irradiation and present high recycling performance even after three re-use cycles. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.