The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is able to accelerate beams of protons up to an energy of 6.5 TeV. Beams are usually handled with very special and big magnets which can be replaced by small and thin bent crystals for some particular applications, like beam collimation or beam extraction. This alternative way to manipulate high energy beams has been studied by the CRYSBEAM team in the context of the UA9 experiment at CERN. Protons (or charged ions) are in fact channeled within the crystal lattice planes and thanks to a macroscopic bending of the crystal the trapped particles are emerging deflected. The CRYSBEAM team built and tested a number of crystals at the CERN beam test facilities. Eventually one crystal installed on the LHC was successfully proved to be able to deflect the LHC beam by 50 microrad at the end of 2015. Larger bending angles but still efficient in deflecting high energy particles might be used to extract the LHC beam or to study secondary particles from the LHC collisions points. A review of these developments will also be given in the context of the CERN Physics Beyond Collisions Workshop activities.