Dynamic temperature sensing and infrared detection/imaging near room temperature are critical in many applications including invasive safety alarming, energy conversion, and public health, in which ferroelectric (FE) materials play an extremely important role due to their pyroelectricity. As a result, over the past few decades many efforts have been made to improve the understanding of pyroelectrics, explore new pyroelectric materials, and promote their practical applications. In this review, we consider the pyroelectric parameters and the two pyroelectric operation modes. Then based on the operation modes, we review recent achievements in the FE ceramic materials for pyroelectric detection applications, including Pb(Zr,Ti)O3-based, (Bi,Na)TiO3-based, (Sr,Ba)NbO3-based, Pb(Sc,Ta)O3-based, (Ba,Sr)TiO3-based, and Pb(Zr,Sn,Ti)O3-based systems. This review will attempt to provide guidance for further improvements of the pyroelectric properties of these materials and consider future exploration of new FE and other material candidates for use in temperature and infrared sensing/detection applications.