My description above wasn't great. I meant completion would be an improvement in the sense that under zsh `~-<Tab>` can show not only the possible completion options, but also the value they expand to. For example, mine is set to display in the manner of a colorful version of the text below:

    $ cd ~-
    0 -- ~
    1 -- ~/Downloads
    2 -- ~/Desktop

The handling of tilde expansion under bash is a readline option, so users would configure it in their inputrc. It is pretty useful in general, because then it is also available to tools like imv¹ beyond just bash. Unfortunately, as it is handled separately from word completion you'd need to change the completion function to make it match the mark-directories behaviour you like.

If I wanted the text expanded for history use I'd probably expand it before writing using a zshaddhistory hook, but I don't think there is an equivalent in bash so changing the line buffer probably is the best option.

¹ https://www.nongnu.org/renameutils/