Self-healing polymers, which can repair physical damage, offer promising applications across various industries. While their mechanical recovery is key, focusing solely on this aspect may limit their market potential. The unique physical properties of self-healing polymers, such as interfacial reduction, seamless connection lines, temperature/pressure responses, and phase transitions, enable a wide range of innovative applications. This perspective emphasizes the diverse applications of self-healing polymers beyond traditional mechanical strength, exploring their potential in food packaging, damage-reporting, radiation shielding, acoustic conservation, biomedical monitoring, and tissue regeneration. Challenges in commercialization, including scalability, robustness, and performance under extreme conditions, are discussed, along with strategies to overcome these limitations. The potential impacts of self-healing materials on future research directions, such as environmental sustainability, advanced computational techniques, integration with emerging technologies, and tailored applications, are also examined. The authors aim to inspire interdisciplinary approaches and foster the adoption of self-healing materials in various real-life settings, contributing to the development of next-generation materials.Self-healing polymers, which can repair physical damage, offer promising applications across various industries. While their mechanical recovery is key, focusing solely on this aspect may limit their market potential. The unique physical properties of self-healing polymers, such as interfacial reduction, seamless connection lines, temperature/pressure responses, and phase transitions, enable a wide range of innovative applications. This perspective emphasizes the diverse applications of self-healing polymers beyond traditional mechanical strength, exploring their potential in food packaging, damage-reporting, radiation shielding, acoustic conservation, biomedical monitoring, and tissue regeneration. Challenges in commercialization, including scalability, robustness, and performance under extreme conditions, are discussed, along with strategies to overcome these limitations. The potential impacts of self-healing materials on future research directions, such as environmental sustainability, advanced computational techniques, integration with emerging technologies, and tailored applications, are also examined. The authors aim to inspire interdisciplinary approaches and foster the adoption of self-healing materials in various real-life settings, contributing to the development of next-generation materials.