First of all, I found this: Objective C HTML escape/unescape, but it doesn\'t work for me.
My encoded characters (come from a RSS feed, btw) look like this: &a
Nobody seems to mention one of the simplest options: Google Toolbox for Mac
(Despite the name, this works on iOS too.)
https://github.com/google/google-toolbox-for-mac/blob/master/Foundation/GTMNSString%2BHTML.h
/// Get a string where internal characters that are escaped for HTML are unescaped
//
/// For example, '&' becomes '&'
/// Handles   and 2 cases as well
///
// Returns:
// Autoreleased NSString
//
- (NSString *)gtm_stringByUnescapingFromHTML;
And I had to include only three files in the project: header, implementation and GTMDefines.h
.