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This paper introduces a new metaheuristic algorithm called bacteria phototaxis optimizer (BPO). It is designed to solving optimization issues. Inspired by the bacteria phototaxis under the control of photosensory proteins in nature, and based on the basic law of bacterial colony growth and evolution, we have designed the photosensory protein concentration, phototaxis motion and growth operators. These three operators exhibit a highly adaptive and information interaction mechanism. The goal is to simulate the phototaxis process of bacteria and form a complete model of BPO. At the same time, BPO is compared with eight most representative as well as newly generated metaheuristics. Its performance is verified by using 23 well-known benchmark functions with three different types. Additionally, we have conducted several evaluation processes, such as qualitative and quantitative analysis as well as parametric and nonparametric tests. Finally, five classical engineering design problems are used to further test the effectiveness of the algorithm in solving constrained problems. The aforementioned experimental results show that compared with other algorithms, BPO has better accuracy, convergence, and robustness and shows strong competitiveness and optimization performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]