It could be the limitation of the Google drive app for iPhone. iPhone works differently compared to an Android. Have you tried to use Files app in iPhone? 

other iphone users don’t have this issue, so it’s not a limitation for iphone. this is why I’m so confused.

Have you tried to delete the app and reinstall it? it should reset the settings of the app to its default, I assumed.

Thanks for the suggestion, but that did not work either. It was the first thing I tried. :(

Have you tried clearing Google Drive’s cache?

Tap the hamburger menu icon (three horizontal lines) and select Settings. Scroll down to the heading Documents cache and tap Clear cache. You should also be able to adjust the cache size to a larger amount if the current amount is too small by selecting Cache size. Let us know if this clears the issue.

Hi rikkster, thanks for the reply. I’m on IOS so I cleared the cache in Storage settings, but that did not resolve the problem.

I appreciate the instructions, but the hamburger workflow doesn’t work. There is no “Documents” heading in the “Settings” through the hamburger menu. I don’t know how to adjust the cache size on IOS. I wonder if that’s possible?

Really curious as to what’s wrong here. Nobody else I know is encountering this issue.