Electronic Devices with Ambient-Adaptive Displays

A head-mounted device may have an inner display that displays images for a user and an outer display that informs nearby people of the status of the user and inner display. For example, the outer display may display an image of a face, an abstract layer, or both, depending on whether the inner display is operating in passthrough mode, mixed reality mode, or virtual reality mode. An ambient light sensor in the head-mounted device may be used to measure the brightness and color of ambient light. The white point of the face layer on the outer display may be adapted to the color of ambient light, whereas the white point of the abstract layer on the outer display may remain fixed. The white point of a display may be a correlated color temperature setting (e.g., measured in degrees Kelvin) that determines the warmth or coolness of displayed colors.