The question hides three different situations. Some people mean their softened water tastes salty and they want that undone. Some have a well drawing brackish groundwater. A few genuinely mean desalination. The equipment differs completely between them, so the first job is working out which case you are in, and the first two have answers that do not involve buying a desalination plant.
If softened water tastes salty, something is wrong
A correctly working softener does not make water taste salty. Ion exchange swaps hardness minerals for sodium, and on typical hardness the sodium added is small enough to go unnoticed. A distinctly salty taste means brine is reaching the service line, which is a fault rather than a characteristic. Look at the valve: a regeneration cycle that is not finishing its rinse, a stuck valve piston, a drain line restriction, or a brine draw setting far too high all send salt where it should not be. Salty water immediately after a regeneration, clearing later, points squarely at an incomplete rinse.
Reverse osmosis is the household answer for dissolved salt
Where the salt is genuinely in the source water, the practical home technology is reverse osmosis. The membrane rejects dissolved sodium and chloride along with other dissolved solids, which is why RO is the treatment used for brackish supplies worldwide. At household scale it is fitted at the point of use, because treating every gallon entering a house by reverse osmosis is expensive to buy, expensive to run and wasteful when the only salt sensitive use is drinking and cooking. Higher feed salinity means slower production and shorter membrane life.
What does not work, whatever the internet says
A softener cannot remove salt: it works by adding sodium, so it makes the situation slightly worse. Carbon filters do nothing to dissolved salt, since there is nothing for the media to adsorb. Sediment filters and ultraviolet lamps are irrelevant to it. Boiling concentrates salt rather than removing it, because the water leaves and the salt stays. The only household routes are membrane separation, meaning reverse osmosis, and distillation, which condenses evaporated water and is slow, power hungry and best suited to small volumes.
Sodium, health and the alternative to worrying about it
Households on sodium restricted diets sometimes want the softener's contribution gone. The straightforward answers are to leave one kitchen tap plumbed on the unsoftened line, or to fit reverse osmosis at the sink so drinking water is treated regardless. Both are cheaper and more reliable than trying to run the house unsoftened. Potassium chloride can be used in place of sodium chloride in the brine tank, which changes what is exchanged into the water. Our softener salt guide covers how the standing orders and the two salt types compare.
Questions people ask about how to remove salt from water
Why does my water taste salty after the softener regenerates?
Brine is carrying over into the service line, usually from an incomplete rinse, a restricted drain or a stuck valve. It is a fault to be fixed, not normal operation.
Can a water softener remove salt from water?
No, the opposite. Ion exchange releases sodium into the water as it takes hardness minerals out.
Is reverse osmosis effective on brackish water?
Yes, that is exactly what brackish water RO is designed for, though higher salinity means slower production and shorter membrane life than on municipal water.
Does boiling remove salt?
No. The water evaporates and the salt stays behind, so boiling concentrates it. Only distillation, where the vapor is condensed and collected, separates the two.