Sometimes it just takes a little thing to make your day.
I have been using company-mode for ages, becoming accustomed to the list of candidates popping up whenever the automatic completion kicks in.
However, more often than not what I need is in-buffer, context-aware completion,
and in this case dabbrev-expand or dabbrev-completion, which I have bound to
C-, and C-. respectively, are enough.
It’s pretty simple to turn off company-mode automatic completion:
(setq company-idle-delay nil)
That’s it.
To get the list of candidates back when I need, I have company-complete bound
to C-c c.
Nice and easy.