Ionic liquids (ILs) are molten organic salts consisting of organic cations and weakly coordinating organic/inorganic anions at room temperature. ILs have excellent physical and chemical properties such as high thermal stability, high combustible temperature, high miscibility with organic compounds and so on, making them good candidates for high performance lubricants and lubricant additives. The functional designability of ILs makes them novel lubrication materials that can break through the bottleneck of the active control of friction and lubrication. This paper firstly briefly introduces how to design the physical and chemical properties of the ILs required for different friction conditions by bonding specific cations with anions. Then, the lubrication mechanisms of ILs as base lubricants and additives for oils and water are focused on. The correlation between the structure of ILs and the lubrication results are established, which can guide the structural design of ILs in different applications. The response behaviors of friction characteristics under external electric fields are analyzed, which can provide a theoretical basis for the intelligent control of friction based on ILs.