Transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) technology achieves precise stimulation or treatment of the area of interest in the head by directing ultrasound beams to penetrate the human skull to form an intracranial focal point, with the advantages of eliminating the need for craniotomy and the absence of ionizing radiation. High-intensity tFUS treats brain diseases such as essential tremor or brain tumors through thermal effects, while low-intensity tFUS can safely and reversibly open the blood-brain barrier or conduct neuromodulation studies through mechanical effects. However, in practical applications, ultrasound waves undergo strong phase distortion and energy attenuation due to the strong acoustic attenuation properties and inhomogeneous structure of the skull. Acoustic simulation models the interaction between ultrasound and media based on acoustic fluctuation equations to predict the propagation properties of sound waves in different media. Therefore, acoustic simulation is commonly used to predict the intracranial acoustic field for single-element tFUS or to perform phase correction for each element of multi-element tFUS to ensure accurate focusing of intracranial ultrasound. According to the different methods of solving the acoustic fluctuation equations, the commonly used acoustic simulation methods in tFUS can be categorized into numerical and semi-analytical methods. The numerical methods include k-space pseudo-spectral method, time-domain finite difference method and finite element method, etc., and the semi-analytical methods include ray-tracing method and hybrid angular spectrum method. Simulation tools based on numerical methods synthesize various forms of wave propagation in media, such as nonlinear effects, scattering and diffraction, and are widely used in academic research. The k-Wave toolbox based on the k-space pseudo-spectral method and various programs based on the time-domain finite-difference method are the most widely used simulation tools in the current tFUS accurate simulation and experimental research. Although the finite element method has the advantage of dealing with complex boundary conditions, the excessive consumption of computational resources limits its direct application in complex 3D simulations. Compared to numerical methods, semi-analytical-based simulations cannot accurately model full-wave effects, but their computational speed makes them more suitable for clinical scenarios where simulation time is critical. Ray-tracing, developed by Insightec, is currently the only phase-correction method that has been used in clinical applications. Based on geometric acoustic principles, ray tracing enables near real-time tFUS phase correction. At the same time, the hybrid angular spectroscopy method shows higher accuracy in precise targeting than the conventional ray tracing method. In addition, the hybrid application of different simulation methods significantly improves the simulation efficiency and accuracy, e.g., the boundary element method can be coupled with the finite element method to limit the computational area to the region involving only the skull, which drastically reduces the computational load. In recent years, the acoustic simulation for tFUS has continued to make progress, but there is still a huge room for improvement in terms of computational efficiency and accuracy, and the optimal use of computational resources and the combination of multiple simulation techniques may be the direction of the future development of simulation technology. In this paper, the research on simulation techniques based on numerical, semi-analytical and hybrid methods commonly used in the field of tFUS in recent years is reviewed and sorted out, and the research and application of various simulation methods are summarized and prospected.