The official app doesn’t need to be running constantly. It only needs to connect to Meta’s servers once every 14 days.

The Mautrix-Whatsapp bridge will send a notification couple of days in advance to warn you if the main device hasn’t been active.

It might work, I haven’t tried. But I think that’s also quite complicated for most people.

I’ve also heard quite a few people getting their number banned by only running in an emulator. If it’s an older WA account, it’s probably safe, but I wouldn’t do it on a fresh number.

This is true.

I use WA via the Matrix bridge. WA requires the official mobile app (not web) to connect every 14 days, so you need to have it on a separate profile, a spare phone or do a complicated Android emulator setup… To be usable you need to allow the WA app access to your contacts, which results in Meta getting just about the same metadata from you it would via using the official app.

If I wasn’t using Matrix for other things like notifications from servers, I wouldn’t bother with this. The only upside is having only one app for messaging. The bridge system itself works really well, nothing bad to say there.