UITableview: How to Disable Selection for Some Rows but Not Others

You just have to put this code into cellForRowAtIndexPath

To disable the cell's selection property: (while tapping the cell)

cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone;

To enable being able to select (tap) the cell: (tapping the cell)

// Default style
cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleBlue;

// Gray style
cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleGray;

Note that a cell with selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone; will still cause the UI to call didSelectRowAtIndexPath when touched by the user. To avoid this, do as suggested below and set.

cell.userInteractionEnabled = NO;

instead. Also note you may want to set cell.textLabel.enabled = NO; to gray out the item.

If you want to make a row (or subset of rows) non-selectable, implement the UITableViewDelegate method -tableView:willSelectRowAtIndexPath: (also mentioned by TechZen). If the indexPath should be not be selectable, return nil, otherwise return the indexPath. To get the default selection behavior, you just return the indexPath passed to your delegate method, but you can also alter the row selection by returning a different indexPath.

example:

- (NSIndexPath *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView willSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    // rows in section 0 should not be selectable
    if ( indexPath.section == 0 ) return nil;

    // first 3 rows in any section should not be selectable
    if ( indexPath.row <= 2 ) return nil;

    // By default, allow row to be selected
    return indexPath;
}