With the rapid development of the information society and the digital economy, there is a huge amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) generated every year in the world. The composition of WEEE is complex, containing metal phase, organic matter, oxide materials, etc; the combinations are complicated, which are bonding, screw connection, solder fixing and snap connection. These complex components contain not only a variety of rare metals, but also various toxic heavy metals such as lead and cadmium, and various toxic organic substances such as various brominated flame retardants. If these WEEE cannot be effectively recycled, they will cause great harm to the environment. At the same time, the content of rare metals in WEEE is much higher than that in natural minerals. Therefore, rare metals recycling from WEEE can effectively alleviate the increasingly tense in resources. The traditional recycling method can recover various metal resources in electronic waste, but it has high energy consumption and serious pollution. While, the mechanical–physical recovery method has the advantages of simple operation, good economic benefit, small environmental pollution, and has been widely used in the recycling process of WEEE. The physical separation methods include gravity separation, magnetic separation, electrostatic separation, and eddy current separation. The mechanical–physical synergy has received extensive attention in recent years. This work summarized the research progress of mechanical waste utilization of WEEE in recent years, and systematically summarized the various processes of mechanical and physical recovery, including the previous disassembly and crushing process and the most important physical separation technology. The comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the separation technology indicated that the morphological regulation of the crushed product will greatly improve the recovery efficiency of the mechanical–physical treatment.