Change TableCell style on focus without setCellSelectionEnabled

Okay. So as long as your cell actually gets the focus, providing a custom TableCell to the cell factory of the column you want to style differently will allow you to listen to any property of the TableCell, since you are defining that TableCell yourself. Below is an example on how to listen to the focusedProperty of the TableCell and change the style when that happens.

import javafx.application.Application; import javafx.beans.property.SimpleStringProperty; import javafx.collections.FXCollections; import javafx.collections.ObservableList; import javafx.scene.Scene; import javafx.scene.control.TableCell; import javafx.scene.control.TableColumn; import javafx.scene.control.TableView; import javafx.scene.layout.BorderPane; import javafx.stage.Stage; public class MCVE3 extends Application { @Override public void start(Stage stage) { TableView<ObservableList<String>> table = new TableView<ObservableList<String>>(); // I have no idea how to get focus on a cell unless you enable cell selection. It does not seem to be possible at all. table.getSelectionModel().setCellSelectionEnabled(true); // Initializes a column and adds it to the table. TableColumn<ObservableList<String>, String> col = new TableColumn<ObservableList<String>, String>("Column"); col.setCellValueFactory(param -> new SimpleStringProperty(param.getValue().get(0))); // Initializes a column and adds it to the table. TableColumn<ObservableList<String>, String> col2 = new TableColumn<ObservableList<String>, String>("Column 2"); col2.setCellValueFactory(param -> new SimpleStringProperty(param.getValue().get(1))); // We add a custom cell factory to second column. This enables us to customize the behaviour of the cell. col2.setCellFactory(e -> new FocusStyleCell()); table.getColumns().addAll(col, col2); // Add data to the table. table.getItems().add(FXCollections.observableArrayList("One", "OneTwo")); table.getItems().add(FXCollections.observableArrayList("Two", "TwoTwo")); table.getItems().add(FXCollections.observableArrayList("Three", "ThreeTwo")); table.getItems().add(FXCollections.observableArrayList("Four", "FourTwo")); BorderPane view = new BorderPane(); view.setCenter(table); stage.setScene(new Scene(view)); stage.show(); } /** * A custom TableCell that will change style on focus. */ class FocusStyleCell extends TableCell<ObservableList<String>, String> { // You always need to override updateItem. It's very important that you don't forget to call super.updateItem when you do this. @Override public void updateItem(String item, boolean empty) { super.updateItem(item, empty); if (item == null || empty) { setText(null); } else { setText(item); } } public FocusStyleCell() { // We add a listener to the focusedProperty. newValue will be true when the cell gets focused. focusedProperty().addListener((obs, oldValue, newValue) -> { if (newValue) { setStyle("-fx-background-color: black;"); // // Or add some custom style class: // if (getStyleClass().contains("focused-cell")) { // getStyleClass().add("focused-cell"); // } } else { // If you instead wish to use style classes you need to // remove that style class once focus is lost. // getStyleClass().remove("focused-cell"); setStyle("-fx-background-color: -fx-background"); } }); } } public static void main(String[] args) { launch(); } }