Hi,

no the list of registered users can't be paginated because users must be synced with the online list when available.

The search field is possible but it's on demand by users typing in the search field, not by default. However this feature is intended to show all users registered on the website not only a small subset of users, this is done to make it possible to start new conversations with all users in the system.

At the moment to limit the list there are only 3 ways:
- activating a friendship filter if using JomSocial, Easysocial, etc
- limit the chat to users that belong to the same users group
- limit the chat to only some access levels