diff --git a/frontend_tests/node_tests/hotkey.js b/frontend_tests/node_tests/hotkey.js
index 6ef705dfa2..d70b7cba06 100644
--- a/frontend_tests/node_tests/hotkey.js
+++ b/frontend_tests/node_tests/hotkey.js
@@ -99,7 +99,7 @@ function stubbing(func_name_to_stub, test_function) {
     assert.equal(map_press(106).name, 'vim_down'); // j
 
     assert.equal(map_down(219, false, true).name, 'escape'); // ctrl + [
-    assert.equal(map_down(75, false, true).name, 'search'); // ctrl + k
+    assert.equal(map_down(75, false, true).name, 'search_with_k'); // ctrl + k
 
     // More negative tests.
     assert.equal(map_down(47), undefined);
@@ -124,7 +124,7 @@ function stubbing(func_name_to_stub, test_function) {
     // CMD tests for MacOS
     global.navigator.userAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_13_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/64.0.3282.167 Safari/537.36";
     assert.equal(map_down(219, false, false, true).name, 'escape'); // cmd + [
-    assert.equal(map_down(75, false, false, true).name, 'search'); // cmd + k
+    assert.equal(map_down(75, false, false, true).name, 'search_with_k'); // cmd + k
 
     assert.equal(map_down(75, false, true, false), undefined); // ctrl + k
 
diff --git a/static/js/hotkey.js b/static/js/hotkey.js
index a5767d25e7..e6321fbb3b 100644
--- a/static/js/hotkey.js
+++ b/static/js/hotkey.js
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ var keydown_unshift_mappings = {
 };
 
 var keydown_cmd_or_ctrl_mappings = {
-    75: {name: 'search', message_view_only: false}, // 'K'
+    75: {name: 'search_with_k', message_view_only: false}, // 'K'
     219: {name: 'escape', message_view_only: false}, // '['
 };
 
@@ -555,6 +555,8 @@ exports.process_hotkey = function (e, hotkey) {
             var height = $("#compose-textarea")[0].scrollHeight;
             $("#compose-textarea").caret(Infinity).animate({ scrollTop: height }, "fast");
             return true;
+        } else if (event_name === "search_with_k") {
+            // Do nothing; this allows one to use ctrl+k inside compose.
         } else {
             // Let the browser handle the key normally.
             return false;
@@ -616,6 +618,7 @@ exports.process_hotkey = function (e, hotkey) {
             activity.initiate_search();
             return true;
         case 'search':
+        case 'search_with_k':
             search.initiate_search();
             return true;
         case 'gear_menu':