The development of novel clean energy is crucial to mitigating the increasingly severe energy crisis, and hydrogen energy, a secondary energy source, is drawing attention. However, safe and efficient means of storing and transporting hydrogen play-important roles in the scale-up of hydrogen energy. Among the reported storage and transportation technologies, solid-state hydrogen storage is the safest and it possesses high volumetric hydrogen capacity with low operating pressure. Light metal hydrides, in particular, are highly competitive in the field of hydrogen storages except for high operating temperature and slow reaction kinetics that has hindered their potential for wide application. Recently, external-fields such as microwave, light, ultrasound, plasma and electricity have gained attention in the field of hydrogen storage and made significant progress, for instance, in the fabrication of hydrogen storage materials and the improvement of their hydrogen absorption/desorption behaviors. The external field interaction with metal hydrides is promising and has attracted enormous research interest. In this paper, we will introduce some findings and development prospects of various external field applications in metal hydride hydrogen storage systems.