A brief review of the thermal boundary conditions specified at sliding interfaces was performed. New thermal boundary conditions were derived aimed at solving problems of sliding with account of surface layers representing friction layers and tribological coatings. Based on the assumption of linear temperature distributions in the surface layers, the proposed conditions enable one to simplify simulations by eliminating the surface layers from consideration and merging thermally the bulk bodies. A problem of non-stationary heat conduction in two sliding semispaces with the proposed conditions at their interface was solved analytically. The particular cases of the solution were shown to coincide with the exact temperature expressions obtained for different well-known boundary conditions. The temperature influence of the basic parameters was analysed in dimensionless form on example of a decelerative sliding between a semispace covered with a surface layer and a semispace of constant temperature. An estimation of the error introduced by the proposed conditions was done. It was found that the error is below 1% for a wide class of friction layers and coatings met in practice. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.