Dry permanent magnetic separators have been widely used in the mineral and coal processing industries due to their simple operation and high separation efficiency. These tools not only discard some amount of bulk gangue from the raw ore, thereby reducing the volume of the grinding operation and cutting energy consumption, but also do not require water in the sorting process, thereby expanding their applicability to arid and cold areas. With the depletion of global iron ore resources, a dry, low-cost processing or pre-sorting prior to the wet separation has received the attention of industrial practitioners as a potential alternative. The performance of dry magnetic separators plays a critical role in dry processing This paper reviews the dry magnetic separators available in the literature and describes their operating principles, separation performance, and applications. A detailed comparison of different separators is also conducted to evaluate the differences in their sorting performance and mechanisms and to provide a reference for the optimization of dry magnetic separators.