The narrow bandgap Tin Selenide (SnSe) is a promising material for optoelectronic, photovoltaic and thermoelectric applications. A new phase cubic π-SnSe is investigated under pressure for the first time. The studies were carried out by applying uniaxial hydrostatic pressure on π-SnSe structure from 0 GPa to 40 GPa. The results indicate that the structural parameters such as lattice parameters and cell volume show inverse relation to the pressure and shows smooth decreasing behaviour from 0 to 40 GPa. The bandgap of π-SnSe shows a significant variation at different external hydrostatic pressure (GPa). At 0 GPa its bandgap nature is direct and when pressure started to increase from 5 to 30 GPa it shows an indirect nature, and at further increase of pressure it started to exhibit the metallic behaviour (35–40 GPa). From the detailed analysis of the optical properties, it is concluded that external pressure might be the key reason to enhance the near/mid infrared light activity. The value of static dielectric constant and refractive index changes from 10.10 to 76.20 and 3.18 to 8.74 respectively as pressure increases from 0 to 40 GPa. Also, absorption energy increases as new peaks started to emerge with the increase in pressure. Moreover conduction shows substantial variation from 4.63 to 10.80 (1/fs) with pressure. The optical property enhancement is mostly due to the pressure modified electronic structures of π-SnSe (cubic phase). The tuning/manipulation of the structural and optical properties of π-SnSe suggest that this new cubic phase has a wide range of applications for pressure based optoelectronic systems.