How To Set A Custom UITableViewCell Selection Style Color

Posted on July 9th, 2013

The storyboard only gives three options for the Selection color of a UITableViewCell:

However, for my ShopLater app, I wanted the selected cell to be pink! Why only blue or gray?!!! I was surprised when I found the answer on how to do it, but it makes sense. Basically the the selection color of a UITableViewCell is actually a background color on a subview of the cell.

So, to change the selection color, simply assign a different selection view to the selected background view of your cell in your code!

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView 
         cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:sMenuStoreCell 
                                                            forIndexPath:indexPath];

   // configure your cell here

    // this is where you set your color view
    UIView *customColorView = [[UIView alloc] init];
    customColorView.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:180/255.0 
                                                      green:138/255.0 
                                                       blue:171/255.0 
                                                      alpha:0.5];
    cell.selectedBackgroundView =  customColorView;

    return cell;
}

Here is what the ShopLater selected cell looks like with this code in place:

This is really cool. Just think of the possibilities. You could actually configure a fun background image instead of just a color when the user selects a cell! You can also have different selection backgrounds for each cell. I just hope Apple would approve the fun 🙂

jjthetrader

Thank you so much for this!

In swift I did this:
. var myCustomSelectionColorView = UIView()
myCustomSelectionColorView.backgroundColor = UIColor.greenColor()
cell.selectedBackgroundView = myCustomSelectionColorView
- MizAkita
  
  thanks for this!
RemyDCF

Thank You
PrettyITGirl.com

thanks for this. The advantage of having an experience working with Objective-C is really helpful, I started my journey in iOS using that language, and now I’m using Swift in my new company. 😀 Just saying that I can easily convert this to Swift. haha.

DR
Philippe Badizé

Many thanks again, Natasha !

In case you want a blurred background for the cell (and not a color), you might want to use for Swift 3 :

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {

let product = products[indexPath.row]
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: ViewController.tableViewCellIdentifier, for: indexPath)

configureCell(cell as! WelcomeTableViewCell, forProduct: product)

//HERE : Let’s add the blur effect to the selected cell
let blurEffect = UIBlurEffect(style: UIBlurEffectStyle.light)
let blurEffectView = UIVisualEffectView(effect: blurEffect)
cell.selectedBackgroundView = blurEffectView

return cell

}