After trying a lot of different answers from SO, I have decided to ask my own question.

I have a UITableViewCell which contains UITextView. The textview could contain both plain text or links. I basically want the links to be selectable but long pressing on anywhere other than the link should show the menu actions such as copy and paste. 

What I have tried so far. I have subclassed `UITextView`

```
-(BOOL)canBecomeFirstResponder {
    return NO;
}

```

I have set `bodyTextView.selectable = NO`. This does provide the desired effect, but the links become unselectable. 

Once I change to `bodyTextView.selectable = YES`, the links are selectable but longpressing on a textview which has only text in it, selects the text with no actions as shown. 
[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7rzkb.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7rzkb.jpg)

Ideally I would want only the links to be selectable. I have also tried 

```
- (void)textViewDidChangeSelection:(UITextView *)textView {
   if(!NSEqualRanges(textView.selectedRange, NSMakeRange(0, 0))) {
       textView.selectedRange = NSMakeRange(0, 0);
   }
}

```

This definitely removes the selection, but still cannot show the popup action menus. Any help would be appreciated.