The issue of formaldehyde pollution in indoor building materials was receiving increasing attention from scholars. With the increasing number of research cases on building materials, a systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of existing representative technologies was crucial for the future development of building materials. Adhesives and formaldehyde scavengers were common additive materials in building materials. The effects brought by the technological innovation of these two technologies were more cost-effective and feasible compared to the updating of building materials themselves. This article reviewed the research progress of adhesive and formaldehyde scavenger technologies for three types of building materials (wood-based materials, coatings, and insulation materials) since 2000, totaling 300 articles. It outlined the key technological advancements of each development stage and included a meta-analysis of 80 selected studies to evaluate the effectiveness of these technologies in reducing formaldehyde emissions. The meta-analysis results indicated that, among all studied adhesives, natural plant-based and bio-based adhesives were the most effective in reducing formaldehyde emissions, achieving an overall reduction rate of 91%-94%. For formaldehyde scavengers, nanomaterials, particularly graphene and titanium dioxide, performed the highest effectiveness in reducing formaldehyde emissions, with an overall reduction rate of 97%-98%. The issue of light supply was the main bottleneck for the technological breakthroughs. The combination of degradation materials and adsorption materials for formaldehyde scavengers was currently a research hotspot, and the combination of adhesives and scavengers was also a future research direction.