Because I've read this post recently and it has helped me, I wanted to post another answer to consolidate all of the answers (for posterity).
So, there are actually 5 different answers depending on your desired logic and/or result:
1.To disable the blue highlighting without changing any other interaction of the cell:
[cell setSelectionStyle:UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone]; I use this when I have a UIButton - or some other control(s) - hosted in a UITableViewCell and I want the user to be able to interact with the controls but not the cell itself.
NOTE: As Tony Million noted above, this does NOT prevent tableView:didSelectRowAtIndexPath:. I get around this by simple "if" statements, most often testing for the section and avoiding action for a particular section.
Another way I thought of to test for the tapping of a cell like this is:
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { // A case was selected, so push into the CaseDetailViewController UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath]; if (cell.selectionStyle != UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone) { // Handle tap code here } }
2.To do this for an entire table, you can apply the above solution to each cell in the table, but you can also do this:
[tableView setAllowsSelection:NO]; In my testing, this still allows controls inside the UITableViewCell to be interactive.
3.To make a cell "read-only", you can simply do this:
[cell setUserInteractionEnabled:NO];
4.To make an entire table "read-only"
[tableView setUserInteractionEnabled:NO];
5.To determine on-the-fly whether to highlight a cell (which according to this answerthis answer implicitly includes selection), you can implement the following UITableViewDelegate protocol method:
- (BOOL)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView shouldHighlightRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath 
