UITableView Setting some cells as "unselectable"

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;
}

use this:

cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone;

Set the table cell's selectionStyle property to UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone. That should prevent it from highlighting, and you can also check that property in your tableView:didSelectRowAtIndexPath:.