Titanium oxide (TiO2) is one of the most widely studied materials due to its fascinating properties and versatile applications in environmental and energy fields ranging from photocatalysis to solar cells and lithium ion batteries. The significance and variety of these applications have attracted great attention and spurred substantial progress in the synthesis and fundamental understanding of TiO2-based nanomaterials, nanocomposites, and nanoderivatives. This review summarizes the recent advances in the design and preparation of TiO2-based nanomaterials, nanocomposites, and nanoderivatives obtained from titanium glycolate precursor. Utilizing different fabrication strategies, titanium glycolate precursor with controllable morphology and size has been successfully produced, and it can be directly transformed into crystalline TiO2 nanomaterials through diverse post-treatments, including calcination thermal-decomposition, and refluxing, hydrothermal, and microwave treatment-assisted hydrolysis. Furthermore, doped TiO2, TiO2-composites, and other derivatives could be simply achieved by adding additional chemicals during transformation. The favorable properties of the resulting TiO2-based materials are also discussed, which are relevant to energy and environmental applications in the areas of dye-sensitized solar cells, lithium ion batteries, photocatalytic hydrogen evolution, photocatalytic CO2 reduction, photocatalytic degradation, and adsorption removal of pollutants. (C) 2018 The Society of Powder Technology Japan. Published by Elsevier B.V. and The Society of Powder Technology Japan. All rights reserved.