The standard SQLite shell on macOS doesn’t support arrow key navigation like many standard CLI programs do. Pressing up, down, right, and left in that order outputs the following escape codes in the shell
sqlite> ^[[A^[[B^[[C^[[D
A program called rlwrap
can shim arrow key support into sqlite
.
Install rlwrap
(it’s supported by Homebrew and Nixpkgs) then run
rlwrap sqlite <the rest of the command>
and it should just work.