subscribe without downloading active

[David Hume]

I have found that by putting this line into *scratch* and evaluating it,
I can subscribe to the group without downloading the active file, which
is useful. But is there a way to do this through the UI? I tried
apropos-command but this command does not get listed.

(gnus-subscribe-interactively "gnu.utils")

I have also tried to prevent re-downloading the active file with

(setq gnus-read-active-file nil)

but it still downloads it when I type AA to see groups I am not
subscribed to. I don't think it needs to do this, maybe it is stored
somewhere or I can make it get stored somewhere?