disable the uitableview highlighting but allow the selection of individual cells

You can just set the cell's selection style to "None" from Storyboard:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/HX9qI.png

Or from code:

cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone;

For Swift 3:

cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyle.none

For Swift 4 & above:

cell.selectionStyle = .none

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Change UITableViewCell's selectedBackgroundView color to transparent.

    let clearView = UIView()
    clearView.backgroundColor = UIColor.clearColor() // Whatever color you like
    UITableViewCell.appearance().selectedBackgroundView = clearView

or to set for a specific cell:

cell.backgroundView = clearView

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Try setting cell selection style to None -

[cell setSelectionStyle:UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone];

This will solve your problem

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For Swift 3.0:

cell.selectionStyle = .none

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For Swift:

UITableViewCell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyle.None;

Or when you subclass a cell in swift:

class CustomCell : UITableViewCell {

    required init(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)!
        selectionStyle = .None
    }

}

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in swift 3

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, didSelectRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) {
        tableView.deselectRow(at: indexPath, animated: true)
}

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To add a custom color use the below code. And to make it transparent use alpha: 0.0

cell.selectedBackgroundView = UIView(frame: CGRect.zero)
cell.selectedBackgroundView?.backgroundColor = UIColor(red:0.27, green:0.71, blue:0.73, alpha:1.0)

If you use custom color and want to give it rounded corner look use:

cell.layer.cornerRadius = 8

Also, use this for better animation and feel

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, didSelectRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) {

    tableView.deselectRow(at: indexPath, animated: true)
}

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For those looking for a programmatic way in Swift 3

cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyle.none

---

https://i.stack.imgur.com/nYMo0.png

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For Objc:

[cell setSelectionStyle:UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone];

- (void)viewDidLoad {
  [super viewDidLoad];
  _tableView.allowsSelection = YES;
}
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    .. .. .. .. 
   [cell setSelectionStyle:UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone];
   . . . . .. 
}

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For Swift 5 the best way is:

cell.selectionStyle = .none

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Here is the solution for swift 3,works even in editing mode

cell.selectionStyle = .gray
cell.selectedBackgroundView = {

    let colorView = UIView()
    colorView.backgroundColor = UIColor.black.withAlphaComponent(0.0)
    //change the alpha value or color to match with you UI/UX

    return colorView
}()

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