[s_henry_paulson]

Once you get used to cmd+space. It's so much easier to hit the key combo, type the first letters of the program you want and hit enter than clicking through a bunch of folders and scrolling around.. but after reading this wikipedia article, I think I may have to find an alternative.

[FussyZeus]

Check out Alfred. I use the free version myself, you can un-assign command space from Spotlight in OS X first, then assign Command Space to that. It does basically the same thing minus the Internet connected stuff like location searching and whatnot.

Alfred can be setup to index folders, contents of text files, pictures, etc. and harder things like System Prefs screens too.

I myself keep Spotlight on Command Shift Space for the rare occasions when I want to take advantage of the Internet connected stuff, but keep using Alfred for everything else (less to do with privacy, more because Alfred is just quicker.)

[unluckier]

Or just turn off the web features. It's quite trivial to do so. http://www.howtogeek.com/224344/how-to-disable-spotlights-we...

[Retra]

The twelve programs I use most frequently are all on my dock, or accessible from the command line, which I can access by pressing opt+space. Everything else I just use the app menu for.