There is an old issue proposing making ↑↓ navigate through history in Shell, with cntl/alt ↑↓, for instance, navigating through lines.  


In the meanwhile, one is supposed to be able to redefine the abstract <history-next> and <history-previous> keys in the Keys tab of the settings dialog.  For instance, to Alt-Down and Alt-Up.  However, it is not currently working as I expect and I need to investigate more.

A new history list mechanism is a possibility, but I would want to first change Shell to only add syntactically correct entries to the permanent list.  One should be able to edit a statement until it is correct, just as when trying to run from the editor.  This would reduce the need to retrieve history by perhaps half (depending on one's syntax knowledge and typing accuracy).