replace dash with synapse

I found the launcher application called Synapse and it’s indeed very easy to use. It basically replaces Bookmarks and the built-in DASH launcher of Ubuntu. I set the keybinding to CTRL-TAB which seems to interfere the least with any applications.

Next is disabling the Launcher from its default keybinding of <Super>.
This page describes how to use Compiz Config Setting Manager (ccms) to disable/change Launcher activation key.

Finally, Synapse by default ships with the search engine DuckDuckGo, if you are like me who just uses Google you can try this solution on Launchpad.