With the rapid development of information technology, the high frequency soft magnetic materials have become one of the hot research areas. Compared with the traditional bulk materials and microwave ferrite materials, the soft magnetic thin films are expected to meet the technical requirements of high-performance, lighter and thinner at the same time, and show great potentials in applications. Therefore, they attract much attention from the area of magnetic materials and microwave devices. Facing the development of integrated microwave technology toward higher frequency, to improve the in-plane uniaxial magnetic anisotropy is the key in this field. As a review, this paper summarizes the developments of the tuning of in-plane uniaxial magnetic anisotropy and microwave magnetic properties in soft magnetic metallic thin films, starting from different kinds of anisotropies, including induced anisotropy, shape anisotropy, magnetoelastic anisotropy, exchange anisotropy, magnetocrystalline anisotropy, and so on.