UITableView Setting some cells as “unselectable”

Question

How can I set the UITableView\'s cell property to be unselectable? I don\'t want to see that blue selection box when the user taps on the cell.

Answer 1

To Prevent Row Selection

To completely prevent selection of the UITableViewCell, have your UITableViewDelegate implement tableView:willSelectRowAtIndexPath:. From that method you can return nil if you do not want the row to be selected.

- (NSIndexPath *)tableView:(UITableView *)tv willSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)path
{
    // Determine if row is selectable based on the NSIndexPath.

    if (rowIsSelectable) {
        return path;
    }
    return nil;
}

This prevents the row from being selected and tableView:didSelectRowAtIndexPath: from being called. Note, however, that this does not prevent the row from being highlighted.

To Prevent Row Highlighting

If you would like to prevent the row from being visually highlighted on touch, you can ensure that the cell's selectionStyle is set to UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone, or preferably you can have your UITableViewDelegate implement tableView:shouldHighlightRowAtIndexPath: as follows:

- (BOOL)tableView:(UITableView *)tv shouldHighlightRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    // Determine if row is selectable based on the NSIndexPath.

    return rowIsSelectable;
}