Select which users I can see messages from

Hello! I play on a multiplayer server with a very active chat. Receiving constant messages in chat is distracting, but I would still like to be able to message my friend who I play with. It is possible to go through the list and hide messages from individual players, but this takes a while and it resets the next time I log in. Could you please add a feature to only receive messages from certain users? That would be very helpful. Thank you!