Frankly I just install Island, and then run Whatsapp (and all not-always-needed apps) inside it. Plus bonus: you can freeze the apps you don't need and keep the island running.

TIL about the Island app. Thank you!

Shelter.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/

https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter

Also very useful, thank you!

Exactly, what I am going to use it for. I tried using whatsapp for long in a VM of android x86 image didn't work too well for me.

I recommend you to use web.whatsapp.com then, it's pretty decent now (except that it does not support calls)

That needs whatsapp running on your phone to work as far as I know (because it basically runs the communication on the phone and then syncs that to the browser)

If you can work out how to get on the beta release of web.whatsapp.com then it's no longer required for your phone to be online.

but you still need to feed a QR code to the android's "camera" on each browser you want to use.

Multi-device [1] which is now in beta lets you use WhatsApp on the web without the phone connection.

[1] https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/download-and-installation/a...

What do you mean? Where is it needed?

There are unfortunately situations where the only way to reach someone is via WhatsApp. I have avoided them but i can see WhatsApp in a VM being useful for those purposes.

i believe they are referring to the whatsapp bug that the saudi prince used on jeff bezos. simply sending bezos a message gave the saudi prince root access on his phone and he dumped all his messages and photos and released them to the press. running in a vm would just have whatsapp so they can send and receive messages without exposing all the private information on their phone in case of some 0day

You could connect to the VM using somelike like TeamViewer running on your phone.

You would run TeamViewer on your phone 24/7 with a persistent connection to a server? Now would you receive the notifications?